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Date:      Fri, 7 Jan 2005 09:10:42 +0100
From:      "Colin J. Raven" <colin@kenmore.kozy-kabin.nl>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Running top on system console without being logged on
Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.4.61.9.0501070907540.27185@kenmore.kozy-kabin.nl>
In-Reply-To: <659027645.20050106210412@wanadoo.fr>
References:  <1761142680.20050104050725@wanadoo.fr> <040201c4f372$06d09210$92a7cb52@rekon> <015301c4f3e8$58464920$92a7cb52@rekon> <659027645.20050106210412@wanadoo.fr>

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On Jan 6 at 21:04, Anthony Atkielski launched this into the bitstream:

> Reko Turja writes:
>
> RT> Actually not command line options as such, but you can make a login
> RT> class for the top user in /etc/login.conf and feed the options via TOP
> RT> environment variable from there.
> RT>
> RT> You cant shell out from top and renicing from non root account is
> RT> impossible (except dropping the niceness of your own process). I think
> RT> the approach is secure enough and if you give "topper" good enough
> RT> password or deny logon from anywhere except from console, everything
> RT> should be ok. Of course if the terminal is accessible to others than
> RT> administrative staff, giving out the usernames can be a risk, but you
> RT> can use the usernumbers option to avoid giving out the usernames.
> RT>
> RT> Did myself something very similar with a IPless firewall between a while
> RT> back but I ran vmstat in the console instead. Good one glance monitoring
> RT> without the need of logging on the machine itself.
>
> I created a special user that logs directly into top.  I don't run
> telnet or anything so login isn't possible from anywhere else, and it's
> a plain user account with a good password.  It seems to work pretty
> well.
>
While masking the machine/LAN/location specific info, could you please 
post how you did this? What shell etc etc. I (for one) would be *most* 
grateful for this since (like many apparently) I'd like to do this too. 
Not mission critical in my case, but wildly cool if it could be done 
securely.

Regards & TIA,
-Colin



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